The pertinent question nobody’s asking – or at least not often enough – is not “Can the Dandy be saved?”, but “Does the Dandy deserve to be saved?”
This is a great book. Slightly skimpy on the details, but certainly a great place to start if you’re one of those worryingly young people who’s only aware of Johnny Rotten because of those butter adverts.
Neverland is obviously a sincere effort, but not really much better than the wave of cash-in rubbish that Bluewater have knocked out in more recent years.
In December The Dandy is seventy-five years old. DC Thomson have chosen that moment to end the print edition.
Swift was the fourth title to emerge from the Hulton Press stable under the auspices of the Reverend Malcolm Morris as part of his crusade to produce high quality, morally uplifting comics for children. Whilst never to gain the giddy heights achieved by Eagle, it joined secondary titles Girl and Robin, and was a publication which targeted the then-untapped audience between pre-schoolers and independent readers, completing for Hulton a slick and colourful line of publications which catered to all “good and decent” children from the cradle to adulthood.
Pat Mills, co-creator of Charley’s War, Slaine and Marshall Law, amongst dozens of other series, interviewed by Jenni Scott about the largely unknown side of his career, on Jinty, Tammy, Misty and other girls’ comic weeklies.
It’s hard to see anyone not enjoying this. Jack Staff is a great British superhero, and the stories revolve around him and a number of other unusual characters around him.
Veteran comedy weekly Dandy has been having a bad decade; It was completely revamped in 2004, ditching most of the long-running series, but, despite much publicity at the time, almost no-one noticed.
After one of the more effective plugging campaigns in decades, Clint, the adult anthology touted as a comics event akin to the Eagle and 2000AD launches, has been unleashed into British newsagents and supermarkets. Who are confused as buggery about it.
